Potential Dangers of Social Media

Cyber Bullying

Cyber Bullying is a major issue when it comes to social media and is most likely the most common. Cyber bullying affects almost everyone that uses social media and most people have likely encountered cyber bullying at some point whether it be someone threatening them, pretending to be them or harassing them. Here is a graph of the amount of students from a school in the US that have been cyber bullied.

Identity Theft

In 2012 more than 12 million people became victims of identity theft and fraud and a total of $21 billion was lost on that year alone. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are attacked online and user info like usernames, passwords and email addresses are stolen and used to steal your identity. In some cases criminals can just look at people’s profiles and see the information they’ve posted on there for people to see, information like date of birth, hometown, pet names and interests and hobbies and with this information someone could easily steal your identity.

Invasion of Privacy

Many people don’t set proper privacy settings on their profiles which leaves their profiles open for anyone to view. This is an issue because someone could post something along the lines of “I’m going on holiday tomorrow for 2 weeks” and criminals will see this and take advantage of this and most likely burgle your home. It’s not just criminal that exploit this employers and big companies can use it to look up your previous history if you are attempting to get a job in that company.

Kevin Crawford